


your hands were making artifacts in the corner of my mind

by gaykavinsky (lesbiankavinsky)



Series: Ballet AU [2]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ballet, Alternate Universe - Human, M/M, anyway i love ballet au so much i couldn't stop myself from writing more!, bc what is fic for if not ruthless projection of one's own experience of love, izzy shows up for like three seconds but it's for an organic greek go-gurt food fight so like, jace has one million feelings during a chopin nocturne, on brand, there'll probably be a couple more short fics like this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 11:20:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16596896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbiankavinsky/pseuds/gaykavinsky
Summary: The first two nocturnes are lovely enough, but still Jace thinks that overall he prefers listening to Simon when they’re alone together, when he’s sitting next to Simon on the piano bench and can watch the elegant movement of his fingers across the keys, hear the rhythm of his breathing which moves, like a dancer’s, with the phrases of the music. But then Simon begins to play the third nocturne and something changes. He can’t say at first what it is that makes his throat tighten and a prickling begin behind his eyes, but almost from the first notes, Jace is crying.





	your hands were making artifacts in the corner of my mind

Between Jace’s hectic schedule and Simon’s tendency to tell him about recitals at the very last minute, it’s not until March that Jace actually makes it to the conservatory for a concert. He feels bad that it’s taken this long for Simon’s sake, but for himself he doesn’t expect it to be that much different from listening to Simon practice. A lot of their time together is actually spent rehearsing, even when they’re at Simon’s apartment with Simon working his way through new music he’s learning and Jace using the kitchen counter as a barre and doing the endless exercises that, at this point, feel more natural to him than standing still. He’d once told Izzy that this is how they spend a lot of their weekend afternoons, and she’d stared at him for what had felt like several full seconds before saying, “You guys are forty. You’re married and you’re forty and you’ve abandoned me as the baby of the family and now I have two forty-year-old brothers.” This comment had led to a food fight involving the organic Greek go-gurts they were eating before class, which Jace feels is sufficient proof that he and Izzy can still share the title of baby of the family, regardless of how he spends his time with his boyfriend. 

Now, settling into his seat in the recital hall and reminding himself that it’s okay to cross his legs -- shouldn’t ballet have dealt with this kind of masculine self-censorship ages ago? -- he opens his program to see what Simon’s playing. Simon had refused to tell him on the grounds that he wants the recital to be the first time Jace hears him play it, which also means that Jace has gotten kicked out of Simon’s apartment a couple times in the past few weeks, cutting short several of their mutual practice sessions. Jace scans through the program until he sees Simon’s name, and, next to it, a series of Chopin nocturnes. He’d thought maybe he’d recognize the names of the pieces, but though he’s certainly heard Chopin nocturnes, he doesn’t know them either by number or by key signature. Simon has taken him to a few parties with his friends -- if you can call half a dozen mildly buzzed people sitting on the floor of a well lit living room a party -- and the main thing Jace has learned from these experiences is that he doesn’t know classical music nearly as well as he thought he did. As a dancer, he knows more -- a lot more -- than most people, but one of Simon’s friends has an actual record player and after enough rounds of drop the needle, Jace has concluded that these people have essentially superhuman encyclopedic memories. He’d told Simon that as they were walking to the subway and Simon had punched him in the arm and said, “Like any of us could do 15 pirouettes in a row without even coming close to falling down.”

The recital begins and Jace does enjoy it, but his problem with concerts has always been that music is meant to be _danced_ to, and there’s something about being made to sit still while listening to it that has always felt inherently wrong to him. When Simon comes on stage Jace feels a little tightening around his heart because really, Simon cleans up ridiculously well and he looks gorgeous as ever in his dark suit, and also because his pre-performance nerves, while well-masked, are clear to Jace: the way his hands smooth over the lapels of his jacket to hide the fact that they’re shaking, the forced look of his smile. But all that goes away the second he sits down at the piano bench, laying his hands on the keyboard and taking a moment to close his eyes and take a breath before he begins to play. The [first](https://open.spotify.com/track/347r0csyiBuGI9eymrI08J?si=kYWQsgz7QpGqZ0A7DK3TzQ) [two](https://open.spotify.com/track/4Q37ztBKLNpNTM60J1hHgL?si=9VokzfiCS7GAqaLZnmsm2A) nocturnes are lovely enough, but still Jace thinks that overall he prefers listening to Simon when they’re alone together, when he’s sitting next to Simon on the piano bench and can watch the elegant movement of his fingers across the keys, hear the rhythm of his breathing which moves, like a dancer’s, with the phrases of the music. But then Simon begins to play the [third nocturne](https://open.spotify.com/track/7G83YTYLdNqbfCeHO7IfWa?si=MYzPdDESRni_eMvxJ_RqdA) and something changes. He can’t say at first what it is that makes his throat tighten and a prickling begin behind his eyes, but almost from the first notes, Jace is crying. The music builds and he just keeps crying, but there’s not a single corner of him that feels sad -- and how rare is that fact all on its own -- and all he can do is sit there, mouth in the kind of wide open smile that belongs to children, but not to his own childhood. He can taste salt at the corners of his lips. 

All of a sudden he realizes that this piece is hitting him differently than the others because it’s the one that Simon loves, and it’s obvious. He sways with the music, the motion of each finger travelling down his arm and across his back. Even his left foot, the one not at the pedals, is twisting at the ankle, dancing. There’s a look on his face, completely and wonderfully familiar to Jace, and Jace is struck by the thought that it’s entirely possible that Simon loves him the way he loves this nocturne, and the thought only makes him cry harder. He’s trying not to laugh, trying not to sob, trying not to make a scene, but there’s no way to fully hold himself back, not at this point, not with the tight ball of feeling that he’d learned at a very young age to keep tightly wound in the center of his chest unravelling through him. He’s being undone by a mixture of love and pride and joy that has nothing and everything to do with the music, and almost frantically he finds himself wondering how it’s possible that there are people in love all over the world, and they all manage to do things like make themselves dinner and pay their taxes. As for himself, he’s not sure he’ll even be able to leave his seat. 

The piece ends and Jace takes a quick moment to wipe his face before applauding as hard as he can until the next performer comes on stage. He spends the rest of the recital in a daze, a little light-headed from the crying. Afterward he slips through the crowd to find Simon in conversation with someone he thinks he might recognize from one of the conservatory parties. He hangs back a moment, not wanting to interrupt but also not wanting to be quite as emotional as he knows he’s going to be the minute he touches Simon in front of one of Simon’s friends. Aftera few moments the friend moves away and Jace taps Simon on the arm and, as soon as Simon turns and sees him, a smile spreading immediately across his face, Jace pulls him into a tight hug.

“Hey,” Simon says.

“Hey,” Jace replies. “You made me cry.”

Simon steps back, hands on Jace’s shoulders. “Wait really? Oh my god, your eyes are red. Like really red.”

“You made me cry a lot.” And then, when Simon begins to look concerned, he adds, “In a good way.”

Simon smiles again. “You big softie.”

Jace rolls his eyes, but says, “Yeah, maybe.” Then he freezes. “Oh shit. I got you roses, red roses like the ones you brought me at the dance recital, but I left them under my seat. Shit. I got -- I just got --”

“Hey,” Simon says, “hey, it’s okay. We can go back for them."

The flowers are a bit trampled when they find them, but Jace tells himself it’s the gesture that counts, and Simon’s laughing anyway so things must be okay. 

“You’d think,” Simon says, trying to arrange the flowers so they look a bit less like they got caught in a stampede, “that someone would have put them on a seat instead of just stepping on them. Don’t let the media lie to you, people who go to classical music concerts are animals. Wild animals.” He looks back up at Jace. “I actually made you cry, huh?”

Jace shrugs. He thinks about trying to articulate the wild rush of emotions he’d gone through in the few minutes that Simon had been playing that last nocturne, but realizes that he’ll probably end up blubbering again if he tries, and he doesn’t really want to do that right now. Instead, he says, “I just really, really love you, okay?”   


“Okay,” Simon says. He tucks the roses into the folded up seat next to them and then takes Jace’s face in both his hands to kiss him. “I love you, too.”


End file.
